


all the things that i never said

by snowdropshua



Series: find me in the drift [1]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Angst, Crying, Heavy Angst, Hopeful Ending, I'm sorry Chan, M/M, No Endgame Romance, No Fluff, Trauma, i'm sorry seungkwan, just so you guys know..., seriously so much angst, this was so painful to write lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27627626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowdropshua/pseuds/snowdropshua
Summary: After the war is won, what do you do?Chan stayed at the Shatterdome for as long as he could; Seungkwan packed and left as soon as they would let him. They spent two years apart, and every day it felt like seams inside him were ripping apart slowly, so so slowly.
Relationships: Boo Seungkwan & Lee Chan | Dino, Boo Seungkwan/Lee Chan | Dino
Series: find me in the drift [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2024071
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10





	all the things that i never said

**Author's Note:**

> Quick warning: I don't think there's any graphic violence in this (although if you disagree please tell me!) but corpses, death, war, etc. are mentioned repeatedly.  
> I recently watched Pacific Rim for the first time, although I already knew and loved the concept. Immediately, I started working on this. I finished it within a few days, which is an astonishing turnover time for me, so...it might not be good. Just a heads-up. But I hope you enjoy it!  
> Title from Pacific Rim, of course: “When you drift with someone, you feel like there’s nothing to talk about. I just don’t wanna regret all the things that I never said."  
> I think this should be pretty accessible to those who don’t know a lot about Pacific Rim, but here are some basic terms:  
> Kaiju-giant monsters that rise out of the sea and attack human civilizations.  
> Jaegers-huge robots created to fight kaiju; manned by human pilots, usually two.  
> Shatterdome-the regional headquarters of the Jaeger program.  
> Breach-the crack in the sea that kaiju come out of.  
> Drift-the process that connects the minds of two pilots while in a Jaeger and allows them to control it. Those pilots must be compatible.  
> Kwoon Room-where Jaeger pilots spar; when two pilots are evenly matched in combat, it often signals Drift compatibility.  
> Ghost Drift-even outside of a Jaeger, some mental connection may endure between the pilots.

When Seungkwan was a kid, his family had taken a trip along the Oregon Coast, driving all the way from their home in Colorado. He declared the Pacific Ocean the most beautiful thing he had ever seen and promised himself that he would live there on that perfect coast someday. His mom had laughed, saying that it was their ancestral Jeju Island blood calling him out to the sea.

And then the ocean floor split, spilling monsters out.

After My Copycat’s pilots had destroyed the breach, sacrificing themselves in the process, and all the Jaeger pilots had been discharged, Seungkwan had been left with the impossible task of deciding what to do next. For a moment he remembered his dream of a little house on an Oregon beach, and then he considered living somewhere in Maine or Massachusetts, if the Atlantic would feel any safer. But he discarded both notions almost immediately. Looking at the ocean just made him feel sick now, made him remember ruined cities and broken bones and corpses floating in those waters.

He moved to Kansas and bought a farm.

He left behind the person he cared about most in the world.

* * *

The regret lay heavy on his tongue sometimes, like all the words he’d never said. He imagined sometimes what would have happened if he’d stayed behind at the Shatterdome with Chan and helped wrap everything up once the war was over. 

He knew he couldn’t have done it, though. That place had been killing him.

Chan had always been the stronger of the two of them, after all.

* * *

Seungkwan thought about Chan constantly. Trying to keep himself distracted, he worked on the farm constantly-milking the cows, collecting the eggs, tending his vegetable garden and fruit trees, riding his horse, feeding the animals, making repairs, cleaning the animal pens and his house, cooking-but his thoughts still wandered. 

He knew full well that it was impossible to forget Chan. Their minds had been connected so many times over their five years as pilots that they were like puzzle pieces, one clicking perfectly into the other. You couldn’t just forget a thing like that.

They’d been taught how to coexist, but no one had ever told them how it would feel to be separated, to be thousands of miles away from the person who had seen every one of your secrets and shames.

But he was doing his best. That was all he’d ever been able to do. 

Even if it wasn’t enough.

* * *

It surprised Seungkwan constantly how much he missed it, because he had hated it. He’d gotten into the Jaeger program the moment he turned eighteen, because he thought maybe he could help save the world and finally mean something, and he was there from the program’s glory days, when the Hong Kong Shatterdome was the flagship of the Jaeger program and had almost thirty active Jaegers, until the end, when My Copycat, Black Widow, Bet Bet, and his own Getting Closer were the last active Jaegers in the world. Eight long years of his life that he would never get back.

From his very first mission, he regretted it, but it was too late. He and Chan were already being hailed as heroes. Every time the alarm went off and they dashed to the Jaeger bay, he had to force himself to go in the right direction. To be in that machine was to fear for your life every moment, and for the life of your partner, who felt more like yourself than you did. 

Chan knew he hated it-there are no secrets in the drift-but they never talked about it. And Seungkwan knew that Chan loved it. For him, it was an awful, all-consuming fear; for Chan, it was an adrenaline-fueled thrill. Those feelings mixed so much that it was hard to tell them apart while inside the machine, but when they got out, there was no mistaking the dread and horror as anything but his. 

The worst part was the nightmares. Some of them were fabricated scenarios, but most of the material was pulled straight from his life. That was the scariest thing about them.

But he never had nightmares anymore. He rarely remembered his dreams, and when he did, they were peaceful and full of light: the two of them laughing with their friends in the mess hall, sparring in the Kwoon Room, holding hands on a beach. Those were worse than the nightmares, in a way, because these were things he had once had and could never have again. He was happy with life on the farm, spending his days with his hands buried in the dirt, but the ache inside him was so deep he could hardly breathe sometimes. Half of his soul was gone.

So he supposed what he missed wasn’t the Jaegers or the Kaiju or the war, because he _had_ hated those. 

No, it was Chan, because of course it was. Everything was Chan.

* * *

He first met Chan in the cafeteria. Seungkwan was eating breakfast with Bin and Yewon when Vernon came over to sit by them. “Hey, guys,” he greeted.

Seungkwan looked up from his congee to wave at Vernon, but faltered when he noticed the boy by his side. Yewon was quicker. “Who’s this?” she asked gleefully.

“Lee Chan,” Vernon introduced. “Meet Kim Yewon, Moon Bin, and Boo Seungkwan. He’s new here, but he came from the Sydney Shatterdome.”

Chan bowed and sat with his bowl, and Seungkwan returned to his congee.

They weren’t friends at first. They had too many differences and too many similarities: Seungkwan had been raised in the U.S., and he tended to be louder and more open than Chan, who was from Korea. But they both had an intense ambition, a razor-sharp wit, and an active sense of humor.

They probably would have remained mere acquaintances if not for the Kwoon Room. A week after Chan arrived at the Hong Kong Shatterdome, he and Seungkwan sparred for the first time, and Seungkwan could feel his soul sing. It was a glorious few minutes of give and take until Fightmaster Park called time. “Tie,” she announced, and Seungkwan laughed giddily.

“Your connection is remarkable,” Marshal Han told them the next day as they sat in his office, fresh from their first session of Drift sync testing. Memories of Iksan and Denver and Seungkwan’s sisters and Chan’s brothers were still flashing through their minds. “If all goes well with your training, you may be able to drop by the end of this month.” 

All did go well. They saw their Jaeger Getting Closer for the first time next week. It was one of the newest Jaegers in the world, and Seungkwan marveled at it: 260 feet and almost 2000 tons of pure metal muscle, with more weapons than he could count. It had been his dream for years.

They drifted successfully that day, and just a week later, they were off fighting Primapod.

That was when Seungkwan began to regret.

* * *

It had been two years since Seungkwan had last seen Chan, or spoken to him, even. Chan didn’t know his address, or his parents’, or his phone number. Seungkwan had totally severed all connection between them when he left; he’d been in such a hurry to leave the moment he could, and he had wanted to forget about the war as much as possible. Chan was the most tangible connection to it all. He figured that to let go of his pain, he had to let go of the person he loved most. Of course, it hadn’t worked. He was a fool and he knew it. 

He had phantom pains, now; sometimes he’d be feeding the chickens when suddenly his head would explode in a bright, hot starburst of agony, and he’d fall to the ground and lay there, curled into a ball, until the pain subsided. They were awful souvenirs of the best worst days of his life. They were all he had left of those times, except for the rubber-banded stack of photos of him and Chan and everyone else, which he could never bear to look at. And the memories, of course. He could never let go of those. 

It would be easier to take his mind off Chan if he actually had some friends, but he lived in the middle of nowhere, and he was lonely. Every other week or so, he’d make the thirty-mile trip to the tiny town closest to him to buy any food he needed, send some letters (his Internet connection was pretty shaky, so handwritten correspondence was often his best bet), and chat a little with the grandmas buying groceries and the surly teenagers at the ice cream shop. Nobody knew who he was here, and he was happy that way. He hadn’t heard a word about Jaegers or kaiju from anyone but himself for years. 

That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt, though. He’d been trying to lie to himself for so long, but he was fully aware that it didn’t work and never had. The Ghost Drift was still intact. Sometimes he would feel sharp flashes of emotion and wonder if it was a hallucination or the truth.

So when he felt a sudden surge of nerves and anticipation on a normal Tuesday morning in September, he brushed it aside. He had no idea what Chan was up to. He could be sky-diving or getting married or robbing a bank or held at gunpoint for all Seungkwan knew. There was no way to tell.

He made himself some lunch and had just settled down at the kitchen table to eat it when there was a knock on the door. Surprised, he rose to answer it. He almost never got visitors out here.

He opened the door, a friendly greeting already on the tip of his tongue, but he faltered when he saw who it was: Lee Chan, as handsome as ever, with a nervous smile on his face. “Hi,” he said awkwardly, with a cute little wave.

Seungkwan opened his mouth to say something, but he couldn’t find the words. There was a stubborn heat building behind his eyes, and he wasn’t sure how long he could hold it back.

Suddenly, Chan burst out in tears. Seungkwan looked at him in shock- _he_ had always been the crybaby between them-but then he felt the deep sorrow and relief and joy and pain, both his own and Chan’s, rising in his chest, and he succumbed to the feeling.

“Fucking- _Ghost Drift,”_ he gritted out between sobs. Chan laughed wetly.

They eventually moved into the house and sat facing each other on Seungkwan’s beat-up couch. “How did you find me?” he asked.

“I looked at your employee records,” Chan answered. “Technically illegal, but no one needs to know.” Seungkwan snorted. “I doubted it at first when I saw the address-I mean, I couldn’t really imagine you on a farm, but then I thought about it.”

He seemed like he was going to say more, but Seungkwan didn’t want to talk about it. “Lunch!” he announced, standing quickly. His mom would have killed him if she saw how he was treating a guest, but then, Chan wasn’t much of a guest anyway. “I made myself some fried rice-there should be enough for both of us-do you want something to drink? Or some fruit? Oh, you should come look at my fruit trees later-the peach, plum, and apple seasons are still on, although the cherries are gone-we should just do a tour of the farm.”

He’d been imagining for years what he would say if he ever met Chan again, but they were all theoretical scenarios. He didn’t want to talk about their old lives together. He didn’t want to talk at all. 

Chan made a frustrated noise as he followed Seungkwan into the kitchen. “Seungkwan, I-“ He stopped talking and took a deep breath through his nose. “Can I kiss you?”

Seungkwan’s eyes went wide, but he nodded. Chan put his hands on Seungkwan’s shoulders, and then suddenly they were kissing.

* * *

It wasn’t the first time they’d kissed. They’d done it a lot, actually, in the privacy of their room and empty corners of the Shatterdome, and they’d shared a bed for almost their entire time as pilots, but they’d never taken it further or put a label on it. It was just another part of who they were with each other, a natural progression of the many hours spent together inside and outside of the Drift. Jaeger partners were always close, after all. 

It was almost tempting to call it experimenting, but they’d both been eighteen when they started training. Seungkwan had plenty of experience and knew already that he liked men and women both, and it was clear from the way Chan kissed that he knew he was doing.

It just...worked for them. So Seungkwan had never really thought deeper about it. But something about this kiss felt different. They had both changed since they had last seen each other, since Seungkwan pressed one last kiss to the corner of Chan’s lips and left with his military-issue duffle slung over his shoulder.

Seungkwan had been so shocked to see Chan at his door after years of missing him that he had just felt overjoyed. But when they pulled away from the kiss, he remembered abruptly why he had left in the first place, why he had decided never to see Chan again, and he suddenly, painfully wanted to be away from him more than he had ever wanted anything before.

* * *

Their first mission lived forever in his nightmares. In the middle of the night, an alarm started ringing, and he and Chan bolted out of their beds. They had still slept apart then. They knew immediately what was coming. Seungkwan’s excitement boiled up, making his hands shake, but already there was a pit of dread at the bottom of his stomach. He had made the wrong choice. He didn’t know it yet, but he had.

They got dressed and ran to Getting Closer’s bay, the drivesuit technicians helped them into the suits and strapped them into the Jaeger, and before he knew it, they were initiating the Drift. _Don’t chase the rabbit,_ he reminded himself wryly, but this was already a familiar process. Chan clicked with him almost immediately, and there they were in each other’s heads with their nearly perfect Drift compatibility.

They were going out with Sleep Talking that day to fight a Category III Kaiju. The prospect of fighting with two of the most famous people in the world by his side was making his palms sweat, but the moment he saw Primapod everything else went out of his head. 

The fight was easy enough. Sleep Talking had been in the field for several years already, and its pilots knew exactly what they were doing. They let Getting Closer take the killing shot-”a present for your first time,” Kang Dongho snorted over the comm-and as it sliced its long sword through the kaiju’s soft underbelly, Seungkwan felt suddenly sick.

That was where the problem began. Seungkwan had dreamed of being an idol when he was younger, making people happy with his voice. He had abandoned those dreams, of course, but he’d turned straight to fantasies of piloting a Jaeger. It was no wonder he had wanted it. The Jaeger pilots’ faces were broadcast around the world, in post-battle interviews and tell-all news pieces. They were turned into trading cards and their Jaegers into action figures and cartoon characters. Many became household names: Dreams Again, Bring It, Snap Shoot, Second Life, Sleep Talking. The fact that so many pilots were killed in action didn’t deter anyone from idolizing them and dreaming of being them, and he was no exception. He didn’t have any family who had been killed by a kaiju or a desire for revenge. He just wanted to do something for others.

He’d thought that idols and pilots were similar enough: both could help people, and he wouldn’t mind the fame that came with, either. But he’d forgotten that the very nature of this job involved killing.

Yes, they were kaiju; they killed thousands and destroyed cities and poisoned oceans. They had to die. But that didn’t mean he wanted to be the one doing it. He’d gotten so caught up in the glory of the Jaeger and the Drift that nothing else had mattered.

Even worse, he’d forgotten that the Jaeger did not make him a god. He could save people, but he could never save everyone. Every time he saw a trampled building or a bloated corpse floating in the water, a little twist of guilt tightened his stomach. All those lost lives piled up on his shoulders until he could barely walk under their weight. 

But it was too late now. There was no going back. 

He would regret his decision forever. 

So when they returned to the Shatterdome-when _Kang Dongho_ and _Kim Jonghyun_ congratulated them on a job well done-he couldn’t even enjoy it. He pasted a smile on his face and pretended to enjoy the celebration of he and Chan’s first drop, but he got away as soon as he could. Chan tried to follow him. The Ghost Drift was brand new and weak, but he could still feel Seungkwan’s nausea. But Seungkwan just waved him off. All he’d felt from Chan was joy and exhilaration. There was no need to ruin that for him.

The rest of his time as a pilot continued like that. Seungkwan had resigned himself to a life of fighting and killing and trauma and guilt, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. He wasn’t always feeling awful, because if he had, he would have had a breakdown and been sent away. But the bad had always far outweighed the good. 

The only good thing to come out of those eight years was Chan. Sure, Seungkwan had had other friends at the Shatterdome too, but when you were a pilot, there wasn’t any time for friends. He spent almost every moment of the day with Chan. He missed the Drift every day. The feeling of being so closely connected with someone he loved so much was still the best thing he had ever felt. Even without it, he and Chan had something between them that he had never seen in anyone else. It was a combination of love and shared trauma and science. 

And there was the problem. He loved Chan so deeply that the idea of hurting him made him feel physically sick. They had spent two years apart, and every day it felt like seams inside him were ripping apart slowly, so so slowly. 

But as awful as this pain was, it could not compare to the pain of the Shatterdome. That had felt like cell decay, like he was being eaten up from the inside. If the war hadn’t ended when it did, that pain might have killed him.

He was afraid that it would come back and kill him now. 

And every time he looked at Chan, or felt an extraneous emotion that could only come from him, or just thought of him, he remembered that pain. He remembered the many corpses, both kaiju and human, and the days spent running on fumes, and the fear he felt every time one of his friends went out to fight, and even worse, the fear he felt when he and Chan went out to fight, and the awful memories that ran through his and Chan’s minds in the Drift, and the snap of a bone, and the absolute anguish mixed with relief when My Copycat’s pilots gave their lives to end the war. 

He could never remove Chan from those memories. They were inextricably linked in his mind, and so nothing between the two of them could ever be good again. 

* * *

He and Chan sat at his kitchen table and ate fried rice. He could feel Chan’s eyes on him, but he determinedly kept his eyes on the bowl and shoveled food into his mouth. It reminded him suddenly of the day they had met, and a sharp burst of sorrow shot through him, making him stop breathing for a moment.

They didn’t speak at all. After lunch, Seungkwan showed Chan around the farm, introducing him to all the cows and chickens and his horse, Yubin. 

Chan snorted and spoke for the first time since before they had kissed. “Like Yubin from Wonder Girls? You never change, do you.”

Seungkwan swallowed. “Don’t I?” he whispered. “You don’t really know me, Chan.”

Chan frowned at him. “Of course I do,” he said. “We were-we were inside each other’s _heads._ You know me more than anyone, and I know you-”

“If you knew me that well, you wouldn’t be here!” Seungkwan shouted, losing the fight to stay calm. Chan stared at him, eyes wide, and Seungkwan could feel his hurt. But he couldn’t stop. “Maybe you felt how much I missed you, Chan, and how much it hurt. But you didn’t feel that I knew I couldn’t see you again! You didn’t feel how it would _destroy_ me!”

He fell silent, and they both just stood there for a few long moments. Finally, Chan whispered, “I’m sorry, Seungkwan, I-I had no idea it was like this for you.” Seungkwan felt guilt constrict his heart, hot and heavy, at Chan’s tone and the heartbreak on his face.

“You’re the best thing I’ve ever had,” Seungkwan said, fighting to keep his voice steady. “But every time I look at you, I just remember the worst years of my life.” 

It felt like the most honest thing he’d ever said.

Chan’s face crumpled. He wiped away the tears furiously. “I’m so sorry,” he gasped. “Oh, God, Seungkwan, I-” He turned away, hiding his face behind his hands.

“I’m sorry,” Seungkwan said, beginning to cry. “You deserve better, Chan, you deserve someone who can actually stay with you and be happy. You’re everything to me. You always have been. But it isn’t fair to either of us to try to be together when there’s so much pain between us.”

They were both silent for a few moments as they cried independently, facing away from each other. Seungkwan thought bitterly back on their time as pilots. Who could ever have predicted this? They'd fought monsters in giant robots for years, but somehow this seemed infinitely harder.

Finally, Chan nodded and slowly turned back around to face him, still brushing at his tears. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, okay, Seungkwan, of course. I mean-I would never try to make you do anything. Not that I could.” They both snorted wetly. “I’ll-I’ll leave, of course I will. Right now, if you want me to. But...I mean, obviously you can say no to this, but-can we see each other again? In a few years, maybe, once we’ve both had some more time alone. It’s just-it’s been really hard without you. I know I hurt you, and I’m really sorry about that. I wish I could erase all the bad things that ever happened to you. Obviously I can’t. But I just-I can’t imagine going the rest of my life without ever seeing you again. Of course you could set the terms, we could meet wherever you wanted, and whenever. But...please let me see you again. I don’t think I can bear it otherwise. Oh, and, um, not to intrude, but-Seungkwan, I really think you need therapy. I’ve had a lot, and it’s really helped me. I mean-I know I always liked the fighting more than you did, but the war hurt me too, you know?”

Seungkwan took a long moment to process all that Chan had said. He suddenly realized how selfish he had been. Not for taking care of himself-no, he would never apologize for that, nor should he. But he had never stopped to think how the separation must be hurting Chan. They had both been connected in the Drift, after all. And of course the war had hurt him too. It had hurt everyone it ever touched. Seungkwan just hadn’t seen it. 

Would it hurt to see Chan again? He imagined that it always would. But the pain would probably decrease over time, as all his old memories faded and as he found better outlets for the hurt and sorrow.

And now that he thought about it, he couldn’t imagine living for the rest of his life without Lee Chan. Two years had been hard enough, but he’d done it because he thought he had to. But maybe he didn’t. Maybe there was another way.

He took a deep breath and said, “Okay, Chan, I’ll look into therapy. I doubt there’s anything in town, and my Internet connection’s pretty bad, but I guess I can change that. I certainly have the money to.” When the Jaeger program had been terminated, each of the surviving pilots had walked away with a hefty bonus, since they were war heroes and their salaries had been lowered slowly over the last few years as the program’s budget did the same. The dead ones’ families got a sizable sum, too. Seungkwan always imagined waiting for your child or sibling to come home and getting a consolation letter and check instead.

“As for seeing me again...I don’t think I’ll be ready for a while, alright? I definitely need to work on myself a little first. But I don’t want to cut you out entirely, either.” He headed back to the house, Chan trailing behind him, and pulled out a piece of paper and a pen from a kitchen drawer. “Put your address here, okay? And your e-mail too, I guess. Just to be safe. I’ll contact you when I’m ready.”

Chan wrote down the information in his neat English script and handed Seungkwan the paper. He stood awkwardly and asked, “Should I…” gesturing toward the door.

Seungkwan thought about it. “No,” he decided. “You can stay the night. A few more hours won’t do any harm. You’ve come all this way, after all. And my guest bedroom is just collecting dust.” He wasn’t ready to share a bed again. He probably never would be. They would probably never kiss again, either. And that was fine.

He had spent so much of his life in pain. But as he went to bed that night, for the first time in years, the thought of Chan didn’t hurt. Instead, it gave him hope. 

All this time, he’d been running away from his past, but what he really needed to do was confront it. Chan had been the catalyst for the change he needed. And no matter how small a role he would play in Seungkwan’s life now, he would be there, and that comforted him.

He didn’t dream at all that night. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you writing GC...you guys are the best and I could not have done this without you.  
> Chat with me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/snowdropshua) or [Tumblr](https://snowdropshua.tumblr.com/)! I love talking about fic and I give great recs-for Seventeen and several other groups!  
> I hope you enjoyed this fic. If you did, I'd appreciate it if you talked to me about it!


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